14th
Trying to refresh my memory on ad tags
I’ve been recently brushing up on ad technology.
Interesting that the #1 search result in google for the query ad tags is not from a discussion from a major ad serving platform like Doubleclick’s DART, but rather from a firm called Brand Central - as it describes itself - “the most powerful enterprise-class advertising management and serving solutions that manages online media campaigns from A to Z in the Middle East.”
If you click through onto Brand Cental - you get into a discussion of their ad tagging methodology:
This description is a little misleading - as most ad operations folks will tell you - you do not want to be retagging your site every time you get a new campaign. Typically an ad server implementation works to tag a publisher’s site to define delivery zones - so the ad server can tell from the ad call what placement it is supposed to serve an ad into - i.e. home page banner ad, sports page rectangle ad, auto section skyscraper, etc. And the ad server is supposed to do the heavy lifting when it comes to selecting which ad to deliver into which placement - based on the different campaigns that could be delivered into that ad placement. It’s supposed to be automatic - the ad server algorithms are perfect and select the right ad at the right time to maximize publisher revenue, meet campaign objectives, prevent underdelivery and overdelivery. Is it really that simple? Ask any ad operations professional about “campaign priority” and you will get an earful on how imperfect the systems may be - and how much manual intervention and insights are required. You will hear questions about campaign pacing, about frequency cap challenges, prioritizing campaigns based on CPM or total spend or delivery risk, etc.
Anyways - just interesting that the major ad serving platforms are not in the top rankings of this search term. Maybe they need to invest in SEO?
